The book begins to take shape.

Most books begin existing in the writer's mind first; then on paper and then in the reader's head and so on. Somewhere if the process is fortuitous, it is not robbed of its essence. However it is difficult to articulate how some people can easily give words to thoughts and names to things. This story and this book is intended for people who don't find it that easy. You will find here the same confusions in naming and expression that you face in finding your way through a new city without knowing its language. Know that it is as alien to me as is to you. 

----

It was a strange weather in her mind. Like the phrase "big waves of the ocean" can often be used to describe indigestion of the stomach, she now could feel the churning the mind and the heart. The body does not digest uncertainty let alone the mind. Words that were once friends of hers, came rushing to the tongue of the brain and then stood shocked and blank at the crossword puzzle of the situations in her life. When they were called upon for a simple task, they banished themselves and when least prepared, eloquence ramp walked in the midst of a beggar crowd.

Her understanding of the word - ‘sanity’, was losing itself in the myriad colours and forms of life. Often relationships, places, food or even clothes changed yet the uncertainty persisted. A faint sense of disease, disquiet and irritation sang through much of her daily routine and she felt like giving up every other hour or so. The sense of not belonging anywhere and wanting to be everywhere pervaded her conscience constantly. Almost everything begun was already on the verge of giving up itself in the face of her fluctuating apathy and passion. Stories started tumbling themselves into dead-ended mishaps and the sense of time started pressing itself upon the windows of the mind with cheeky triumph of having defeated her again in the past, present and future. A sense of helplessness and loss of control, no matter justified through the existence of God, others and their denial, made her feel purposeless and adrift in the sea of people so motivated and ambitious. What indeed did she have to contribute to their lives? Or her own for that matter...

Her need to feel needed was building since childhood but she never did surrender to its extremities. Alas philosophy and the company of her equally quirky believing friends had made it more poignant. But in a strange sense of paradoxical humour the more others needed her, the more she felt repulsed by humanity and her own pettiness. Thus, she was stuck in a marble maze unable to move forward or back… How did this state of affairs come into being, you ask? But it is why this book was written by her in the first place. I am merely relaying the information, chapter by chapter.  

REFUGEES AT HEART

Every apple pie, Christmas cake, rogan Josh, puttu kadala, spaghetti weekend, alu paratha and sushi salad that is ever described in a fictional universe found a way home. I cooked several meals in my head where friends were gathered round a table and did not judge each other except for being my friends.
I wondered then as I do now, even in my dreams, is this what home looks like?

Every shade of paint in existence found a way into the pallete,
Where the brush and I spent ourselves in a hurried frenzy
Making sense of the past and thumbing our noses at it
Painting self-adored and wholly private art on India tourism calender-backs.
Spiced tea lay witness to those nights and afternoons where Picasso and van Gogh vied for my mental health and insanity at the same time. Because at the pretext of art anything is possible. Five year old's scenery painted in tears, coffee stains and old school borrowed water colours with poetry scribbled in between.
I asked them that day, is this what home looks like for you?
The voices told me yeah it does, laughing and chiding.

My parents often recount their homes and memories, they sound good to hear for some parts and then there are silences and when I ask them, "is this what home looks like for you?",
They say, "No, you do." They leave their silences to me to fill with my colours.

For city dwellers like me, who have dreams of country vacation homes yet ambitious urban super sonic realities,
There is a particular pace of life and walking with our elbows tucked and heels clicking.
When we meet strangers we speak silence.
We do not make much eye contact,
Afraid of seeing the emotion
The depth of pain and it's recognition in the other pair of eyes.
No denial or anger can tarnish the exultation of possible happy endings to horror stories in human eyes.
Instead, we move on, just asking one question to every related stranger on the road:
"Is this what home looks like?

Stories on skin.

Flaky skin, darkened patches 

Translucent veins. Tattoos that hide pain within them and under them.
Ghosts of sorrows past and present.
Gift wrapped in soft flesh and softer souls.
Stories that are seldom told but when done right, become scars.
And how we like to pick them up in others, hiding our own.
Trading wound for wound and never counting the other person's battles.

My first was a crescent shaped burn mark. Not intentional.
A play thing. A mark of siblinghood and protection. Another a fall from grace splitting my knee open where my brother got to play doctor and then went on to become one. Another a slash from a broken wash basin when I overreached my attempt to be clean. That's my list.
But once I started noticing, I saw that they bloom everywhere.

In crooks of necks and curving elbows, in corners of eyebrows and squashed noses and chiseled cheekbones.
Things that were broken upon human skin leaving scars deeper. I can still feel the glass metal and wood that entered people and stayed hidden in the folds of trauma well beneath skin.
And then there are voices and images and words flashing back.
A horror film that became a silent movie.
Nothing to explain. Nothing to record.
Blood running cold, smiles fading.

ANOTHER DAY

I've got so much to say but all the words are trapped. I'm a message in a bottle that was never sent to anybody. I've always had an audience, even when there was no one sitting in front of me. I listen to poetry as emphatic exertions of those lost souls looking for a beacon, a light house. Those who can't go home or have one. I'm their audience, hidden in the shadows - not applauding, not interrupting. It's almost a crowd me by myself, And all the voices in my head. And when I listen, it feels as if a million of us were listening. Alone - together. And some music. It's a tango sometimes or some blues. A party. Made up of poetry and silence. Love unspoken. Untiring. Unconventional. Unrequited. Born of a schizophrenic heart


--- FROM mental health poetry collections

REBIRTH

So I am back to blogging after ages. Mostly into the void. Time scattered most of my purposes. So I let go of my own ideas.

Travel light

Snip snip snippety snip
Don't hold your breath
Let them cut away
There will be no pain
But people will see, you lost something
But the gain won't be noticed.

Hair is the biggest statement of all
An indicator of change
A radical rediscovery
The shape of your head as it was intended
Maybe a few brain cells here and there shifted their home.
Maybe you grew up a little.

The anger and defiance of youth, the new Bob or the refashioning of tastes in adolescence is known.
This is different. This is difficult. It's a scissoring away of identities.
A refusal to bow to suffering but embrace it.
An emphasis on me as me. And nothing more on the offering that is pleasing for the world to see.
Mostly it's a sign of recognition.
~
Arrival.

Don't hold your breath for change will happen
The most fearful and difficult journeys
Are taken alone.
The sadness is washed away
You emerge stronger.
You do unimaginable things
You also make mistakes
Fall down
Be imperfect
The cracks on your soul are beautiful
The wounds on your hands tell
How many times you tried to help someone and got hurt.
Your face is a map for people
To look for their lost treasure, so that they can trust you,
We met before souls were sent to inhabit the earth
Our love was not newly born here.
So when we roam the mazes,
And find each other - similar souls
Our eyes shouldn't forget to recognize.
That we always would have been around.
For we gave our word to the maker.
Send us to our homes on earth, and when we are done learning, take us back home.
Together.

ATLAS.

THE ATLAS OF OUR LIVES:

On a daily basis we read at least three articles on social media which urge us to think and behave in particular ways if you want to find meaning and happiness in life. On a daily basis, as a mental health professional, I speak to 5 people who are not in sync with their families and 5 people who are experiencing a loss of meaning in their work life.

Life in cities has made people rush, increased the ‘rate of doing’ so much that the ‘rate of being’ gets quashed. But what of living intensely, living on a small scale. By this I mean living in touch with your own surroundings, smell the mud in your own garden, if at all you have one. Something that goes along the message of this post is this poem by Shane Koyczan. https://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An4a-_NjilY

One of the videos I saw was that of Mr Suzuki (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jlyv1hCTr0), who said economics is basically brain damage. It accounts for human made reality but not what is already out there. The environment and ecosystem we were privileged enough to inherit without a will-paper.


LEGACIES AND INHERITANCE:

In the light of natural and human made disasters piling up like Christmas presents we give to our children, perhaps the urban intellectual citizen of the world needs to breathe in deeply, exhale and reflect, just for a while. Are we enjoying this chase? Does it give you a rush or a high? Does it make your family secure to have more than enough money. Does it require you to compare yourself with your neighbors each minute but not be compassionate to them? 

Fukushima will have long term effects, apocalyptic statements will arrive at your doorstep as headlines. Food will be scarce, even if you are rich. There is no escape to what we have collectively created. This was not the case when you grew up, our generation ends up spending more than ever before, and saving very little. Investment, real estate, black money, white money, we know a lot about this, perhaps more than our parents. But they were happier and more successful than us in the same age, and I am talking to 23-35 year olds here. Which is a bigger success – being happy with less money or perpetually wanting more?

This is not to say that the previous generation did not have dreams or did not work hard for them. They knew why they had the dreams and somehow the reasons I hear today don’t seem worth it.

Everyone is either planning to live till 30 only or continue living in the fantasy that they’re never going to die. To escape the past they anesthetize the present and to not think about the future, they make the excuse that they’re living in the present. Brilliant actors we are, but we only have ourselves as audience. The imaginary audiences we carry in our heads, the virtual representations of the entire world’s populations, that is a heavy burden. We work to please that image. Strangely, in our rush to please them, we are not concerned about the same people’s well being. 

I read about tribes, and cultures and “illiterate masses” who are the real educated citizens of the world. They know the place of every leaf and insect in the world. They know the value of survival of every animal they hunt, every tree they ask for timber, a way of life which respects the living and honors the dead. A culture of song, dance and eating your fill and sleeping enough. Tell me honestly, whether one among you does not have a dream of having a vacation. We came from a place in history where work was play, and playful. Where, to have peace of mind, people didn’t have to leave their homes.

So what is it that I propose to you?

Do not act as individual plants. You are a part of a forest. Expand your sense of I-ness. Your self cannot exist independently. It is a fact, not a belief system. Notice, breathe, take in the surroundings at home and work. Consider the people you see as yourself. It is an exercise in empathy. Because you are them and they are you. You share the same home called earth and air that you breathe. A research study with DNA testing revealed that everyone has genes from practically every race, you might have a cousin in the room without knowing them. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyaEQEmt5ls

And the more you chase the welfare of yourself, the more you’ll be struggling. We as people of the earth are designed to take care of each other, to have the distance and the vision to be able to see other’s problems and limitations not to take advantage of them but to care for them when they cannot see it on their own.

In sickness which is rampant, in debt which is high, in anger which surrounds us and makes us feel unsafe all the time – I find only one solution, take care of another human being’s needs if not animals or forests. Take care to not increase someone else’s misery if you can help it. Not as a value education lesson or momentary feeling good about oneself. But as a way of life.

A way of life born out of the understanding that inter-dependency is neither a luxury nor charity nor sympathy nor an ideal. Inter-dependency is a necessity, the more you propagate it as you would a religion, the better it is for the group of weird beings we call human. 

FROM THE FIELD ... as published on www.knowyourstar.com

Going Into The Field

Field work is a crucial component of any social work student’s life. This is where we get to apply whatever theories we have managed to retain, which explain how people and communities participate in life. I was very thrilled to be able to go to the field and learn more firsthand. My first institutional visit really shook me up and made me realize that what I considered a course component is actually a human laboratory of sorts. We are actually examining people’s lives and trying to make an attempt to help them in some small way.

Govandi Dumping Ground: A Case Study

The visit was to an NGO working in the Govandi Dumping Ground. You might have heard about in the news recently when some homes nearby had caught fire, and the entire area was under a heavy cloud of thick grey smoke, and the stench of burning garbage filled the air. What I would like to highlight here are some of the social factors that determine our physical and mental health using the example of the communities living near the dumping ground.

Most of the people living near the ground work as rag pickers, including the women and children in the family. The area has several cultures living in close proximity and it houses a masjid, several temples, and several NGOs. Crime and violence is rampant, and weapons and illegal substances are easily available. Some of the important issues worth discussing here are children’s education, bringing down the violence, finding suitable employment for at least the newer generations, and facilitating some amount of harmony between communities.

Intervening as social workers is quite challenging because of the interaction of multiple issues. A sort of learned helplessness pervades in the community because for so many people this mode of living has become permanent. Poverty is very real and so are harsh circumstances. We, as social workers, come in and do our analysis, address some of important issues, but it is the locals whose lives are severely impacted so solutions need to be addressed at a broader level.

The TB Project: Broadening The Mental Health Gaze

On one of our projects, we tried collaborating with NGOs and the local health providers, both government and private, to understand the prevalence of tuberculosis in one area within Govandi.

TB, which is known to be curable and manageable, is a fatal illness in this locality because of very poor drug compliance, overcrowding in the slums, malnutrition, poor hygiene, and inability to prioritize health. Unfortunately, TB drugs need to be taken regularly as advised for six months, otherwise the body develops resistance to the first line of drugs, and then more expensive and heavy medication is required. Often, people here cannot afford to take the expensive ones on a regular basis. This leads to further resistance to even that class of drugs. Several versions of TB now exist due to this.

TB as an illness affects weakened immune systems worse than healthy ones, so people who are HIV positive, women, children, and the elderly are the most vulnerable populations. Women are at risk because often they eat last, work for the longest hours, and are in close proximity to sick family members as caregivers.

Why the focus on TB when I am a mental health social worker? I want to highlight how health is a subject that cuts across all domains of life. Imagine a young adolescent from the community I have been describing. He may be 17, has dropped out of school, and is trying to help his family by earning some extra cash, which leads to working long hours.

Boys his age have a gang, which competes with other gangs of boys to get better access to where they want to work on the dumping ground. This leads to periodic bouts of violence. The boy may have a sister who is helping him work for certain hours of the day, and now he cannot take her with him to these areas because he is afraid that she may be assaulted in revenge. So the family loses out on income, but the boy is in a more vulnerable position because he has not been honest about where he is going in the evening. He also needs the extra income to buy a little packet of whatever he needs to snort to make his work easier to bear.

What sort of mental health issues do you think the boy and his family members might face? Substance use related dependence? Aggression? Anxiety, depression, stress reactions? Emotion regulation problems? What issues must the sister and the mother have? What about the other siblings?

I do not want to make this article about diagnosing their illnesses, but to showcase the roots of mental health problems that often stem from surroundings, relationships, and the beliefs and psychological processes of individuals. Causes of mental health concerns are studied by using this bio-psycho-social model. A doctor or a therapist can help the person in such a situation only when the person reaches out to them. It is the mandate of a social worker to reach out to these populations, work with government and non-government support systems and raise awareness both inside and outside the communities about the problems present there.

The See-saw Of Health

All of us have had at least one episode of diarrhea/constipation/nausea/dizziness before a high stress event like an exam. These are called stress reactions, our body’s way of coping with a threatening event. This is a small example of how the body and the mind are connected and influence each other throughout the course of our life. Now, scale the example to the level of a community, and imagine the number of causes interlinked that would affect someone in that position with that lifestyle, those restrictions, and no education. What would your physical and mental health be like? I leave you with these questions, which hopefully might lead to the broadening of your gaze the next time you attempt to see the world through another person’s eyes. On the see-saw of the health continuum it is a matter of how much your stressors weigh for you to move from illness to health or vice-versa.

***

For people more interested in reading the technical aspects of this article, look up bio-psycho-social model, social determinants of mental health, and the person in environment model.